2.1 Language of the Ancient Egyptians 2.2 Origins and Development of Egyptian Writing

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2.1 Language of the Ancient Egyptians

The ancient Egyptians spoke a language which is now called Egyptian. No one knows the correct pronunciation of this language, which in any event changed greatly over the course of several thousand years (as did the written language), and there were probably regional dialects and variations in pronunciation as well. The language is known only through its various written forms, the most formal of which is the pictorial script called hieroglyphic. The Greek word “hieroglyph” literally means “sacred writing,” an appropriate term for a writing system that was used on the walls of temples and tombs, and which the Egyptians themselves called the “god’s words.” Linguists classify languages by placing them in families of related languages, such as the Indo-European family, which includes English and many European and Asian languages. Ancient Egyptian is a branch of the language family called Afro-Asiatic (also known as “Hamito-Semitic”). Ancient languages of the Afro-Asiatic family, such as Egyptian, are known only from preserved written texts, whereas many Afro-Asiatic languages spoken in northern and eastern Africa and recorded in recent times have no earlier written form. The Semitic languages form the most widely spoken branch of the Afro-Asiatic languages, and include ancient languages such as Akkadian (an “East Semitic” language spoken and written in ancient Mesopotamia, in a script called cuneiform, which means “wedge-shaped writing”), and Hebrew (one of the “Northwest Semitic” languages of Syria and Palestine, of the 1st millennium bc). Semitic languages spoken today include Arabic and Hebrew, as well as several languages of central and northern Ethiopia and Eritrea. Other branches of the Afro-Asiatic language family include Cushitic, Berber, Chadic, and Omotic. These names relate to peoples and regions in Africa where these languages are spoken. Berber and Cushitic are geographically closest to Egypt. One of the Cushitic languages is Beja, which is spoken by nomadic peoples in the Eastern Desert, and has some close analogies to Egyptian.

2.2 Origins and Development of Egyptian Writing

Although Egyptian was certainly one of the languages spoken in the lower Nile Valley in prehistoric times, the first writing of the language did not appear until about 3200 bc. The earliest known hieroglyphs appear at the same time that a large state was consolidated and controlled by the first Egyptian kings. From the beginning the writing system had a royal context, and this is probably the setting in which writing was invented in Egypt. It used to be proposed that writing was first invented in Mesopotamia and then the idea of writing diffused to Egypt. The structure, scripts, media, and uses of the two writing systems, however, are very different, and it seems more likely that writing was invented independently in both Egypt and Mesopotamia. ITTC02 1/25/07 2:54 PM Page 26

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BC 12345

3000 Early Dynastic Period Archaic (Dyns I–II) Egyptian

2500 Old Kingdom (Dyns III–VIII) Old Egyptian

First Int. Period 2000 (Dyns IX–X) Middle Middle Kingdom Egyptian (Dyns XI–XII) Second Int. Period (Dyns XIII–XVII) 1500

New Kingdom (Dyns XVIII–XX) Late Egyptian

1000 Traditional Third Int. Period Middle (Dyns XXI–XXIV) Egyptian

Late Period 500 (Dyns XXV–XXX)

Demotic Greek Period

Roman Period

500 Coptic

Arab Period 1000

1500

Figure 2.1 Stages of the Egyptian language. Source: Antonio Loprieno, Ancient Egyptian: Linguistic Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996, p. 8. Reprinted by permission of Cambridge University Press ITTC02 1/25/07 2:54 PM Page 27

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In use for over 3,000 years during pharaonic and Greco-Roman times, spoken Egyptian changed through time (see Figure 2.1). These changes are reflected to some extent in the written language (see Figure 2.2). Early Egyptian is the earliest, formative stage of writing and dates to Dynasty 0 and the first three dynasties. The earliest hieroglyphs are found on artifacts from tombs: royal labels that were probably attached to grave goods, royal seals, and labels of high state officials. Hieroglyphs are also found on early royal ceremonial art, the most famous of which is the Narmer Palette (see Figure 5.5). The use of these signs was not standardized. Writing at this time was used to record words as items of information – rather than consecutive speech, with verbal sentences, syntax, etc., and the earliest writing remains incompletely understood because there simply is not enough material. Many more texts are known from the Old Kingdom (4th–6th Dynasties), in a form of the written language known as Old Egyptian. In combination with scenes, hieroglyphic texts appear on the walls of tombs of private individuals, and in the later Old Kingdom, the earliest royal mortuary texts, known as the Pyramid Texts, are found in the inner chambers of pyramids. Full syntax was being written down at this time. Middle Egyptian (also known as Classical Egyptian) is the written language of the Middle Kingdom (later 11th and 12th–13th Dynasties) and Second Intermediate Period. This is the classical period of ancient Egyptian literature, when literary texts such as the Tale of the Shipwrecked Sailor and the Story of Sinuhe were composed. Instructional texts in mathematics, medicine, and veterinary practice are known, as well as letters, legal documents, and government records. Religious texts were written in Middle Egyptian, not only in the Middle Kingdom, but also in later periods. Developing as part of the same large corpus as the late Old Kingdom Pyramid Texts, mortuary texts for private individuals were painted or incised on the sides of Middle Kingdom coffins, hence the term Coffin Texts. New Kingdom mortuary texts are also mainly in Middle Egyptian, including the so-called Book of the Dead (more correctly known as the Going Forth by Day) and the underworld books found on the walls of royal tombs. Around 700 different hieroglyphic signs were used to write Middle Egyptian (but no one text would ever be written with so many different signs). Late Egyptian is the written language of the later New Kingdom (19th–20th Dynasties) and Third Intermediate Period. Although it had been spoken for a long time, Late Egyptian did not appear as a fully written language until later in the 18th Dynasty, during the reign of Akhenaten. The huge body of monumental texts on the walls of New Kingdom temples continued to be written in a form of Middle Egyptian. Numerous surviving government records include the account of a workers’ strike, and many types of texts known earlier, such as literary works, letters, and medical and magical texts, are written in Late Egyptian. Demotic is the written language (as well as a script) associated with the Late Period, beginning with the 26th Dynasty (664–525 bc), and it continued to be in use through Greco-Roman times. A large body of Demotic literature is known, especially narrative and instruction texts. The latest known use of Demotic is from a graffito at the temple of Philae, dating to ad 452. ITTC02 1/25/07 2:54 PM Page 28

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Figure 2.2 Limestone ostracon, with Coptic inscriptions on both sides, addressed to Psan, probably the disciple of Epiphanius, and naming Pesentius of Coptos/Qift. © Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, University College London UC62848

The latest (and last) form of the ancient Egyptian language is Coptic, which began to be written in the 2nd century ad (see Figure 2.2). Since hieroglyphs were associated with pagan temples and practices in Egypt, Egyptian-speaking Christians wrote in Coptic, using the Coptic alphabet, which was derived from the Greek alphabet, with the addi- tion of a few letters derived from Demotic. The last hieroglyphs are from the late 4th century ad, after which knowledge of this ancient writing system was lost. Gradually after the Muslim conquest of Egypt in the 7th century, Arabic began to replace Coptic as the spoken and written language. Coptic continues to be used as the liturgical language of the Egyptian Coptic Church.

2.3 Scripts and Media of Writing

Ancient Egyptian was written in different scripts, depending on the media and the time period. Hieroglyphs are the pictographic signs that appeared from the earliest times when writing was invented in Egypt. Hieroglyphic signs never became abstract and were the most formal script, of symbolic importance for all monumental texts, both religious and mortuary. Hieroglyphic texts were carved on the walls, ceilings, and columns of stone temples, and on many types of artifacts. They were also painted or carved on the walls of tombs, and were used to record many religious texts on papyrus. At the same time that early hieroglyphs were used, a more cursive and informal script now called hieratic developed. Written in ink and not carved, hieratic was easier to write than the pictographic hieroglyphs, and is a more abstracted form of these signs (see Figure 2.3). Both hieratic and cursive hieroglyphs were used to write texts on papyrus. ITTC02 1/25/07 2:54 PM Page 29

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Figure 2.3 Fragmentary papyrus in hieratic about the Battle of Qadesh, fought by Rameses II in the 19th Dynasty (E. 4892). The Art Archive/Musée du Louvre Paris/Dagli Orti

Records were also written in hieratic on ostraca, broken pieces of pottery or fragments of limestone. Plastered wooden boards were another writing medium, and administrative letters with hieroglyphs written vertically on clay tablets, using a bone stylus, have been excavated in the late Old Kingdom governor’s palace at Balat, in Dakhla Oasis (see 6.12). The demotic script, which developed in the 1st millennium bc, was a more cursive form of writing than hieratic. It contains many abbreviations, and has to be read in word groups more than individual signs. The middle text on the famous Rosetta Stone is in demotic, with a hieroglyphic text at the top and Greek at the bottom (see Figure 1.1).

2.4 Signs, Structure, and Grammar

With hundreds of signs in use, Egyptian script is much more complex than alphabets, which were not invented in the Near East until the 2nd millennium bc. Egyptian was ﬁrst written vertically, and horizontal writing did not become the norm until the Middle Kingdom. Signs faced the direction from which they were read, usually from right to left. The script was written with no punctuation between clauses and sentences, and no spacing between words. The system does not write vowels, making it very difﬁcult to reconstruct pronunciation, which is done primarily by working back from Coptic, in which vowels are written. ITTC02 1/25/07 2:54 PM Page 30

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The use of different classes of hieroglyphic or hieratic signs in the same word made the decipherment of Egyptian much more difficult than it would have been for an alphabetic system. The simplest type of hieroglyphic sign is a logogram, with one sign representing a word, such as the sign representing the word for “sun.” Some signs (phonograms), many derived from logograms, were used phonetically to represent sounds in the spoken language, with one hieroglyph representing one, two, or three consonants (uniconsonantal, biconsonantal, or triconsonantal signs). Several uniconsonantal signs, , represent the so-called weak consonants, which were often omitted in writing. Although both biconsonantal and triconsonantal signs appear alone, they are often accompanied by one or two uniconsonantal signs, used as phonetic complements, so that the signs are not to be confused with logo- graphic ones. Determinative signs have no phonetic value and are placed at the end of a word, to graphically convey the general meaning of that word. For example, the determinative sign depicts a woman giving birth. It is placed at the end of the verb ms , “to give birth.” There are also numerical signs in Egyptian hieroglyphs, which number from one ( ) to 1,000,000 ( ). The basic word structure of a sentence in Egyptian is: (1) verb, (2) subject (noun or pronoun), (3) direct object. In gender nouns are masculine or feminine, and in number they are singular, dual (for pairs, such as “two hands”), or plural. Adjectives follow the noun and agree in gender and number. Egyptian verbal sentences can be compound and/or complex, with subordinate clauses, and there are numerous verb forms. There are also non-verbal sentences, in which the sentence structure itself links subject and predicate. Written continuously with no spaces between words or punctuation, individual sentences in texts can only be parsed by applying the rules of grammar. The ancient Egyptian language cannot be described in detail here, and more specific information about its structure can be found in the list of suggested readings. In the process of translating Egyptian texts, Egyptologists often first transliterate the hieroglyphs or hieratic signs into letters of the Latin/Roman alphabet with spaces left between words. Diacritical marks are used for several consonants with a greater range of phonetic values than exist in European languages and a couple of special signs for consonants that those languages do not possess. The text is then translated into English or another language, which is accomplished with knowledge of the grammar of the form of the language in which the text was written. Even with such knowledge, ancient Egypt is a culture far removed in space and time from the modern world, and concepts expressed in Egyptian texts can remain obscure in meaning, especially in religious and mortuary texts. Because of the complexities of the language and scripts – as well as the damaged condition of many texts – several years’ training are required to attain full proficiency in ancient Egyptian. Many Egyptologists are full-time specialists in philology, and archaeologists of pharaonic period sites who do not have extensive training in philology ITTC02 1/25/07 2:54 PM Page 31

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Box 2-A Hieroglyphic signs

Uniconsonantal signs ms n nb i kn y y Examples of triconsonantal signs ‘ anp

w ppr b nfr p ntr f ndm m Examples of phonetic complements n mn “to establish” r ppr “to come into existence/being” h nfr “beautiful” o anp “life” p

h Examples of the use of determinative signs s ra “sun” s pr “to go” S ssmt “horse” l Examples of masculine nouns k sn “brother” g pr “house” t t Examples of feminine nouns d snt “sister” d nht “tree”

Examples of biconsonantal signs Examples of dual nouns wr snwy “two brothers” mn snty “two sisters” ITTC02 1/25/07 2:54 PM Page 32

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need to work with such specialists. It is useful for all specialists of pharaonic Egypt to have some competence in the language – for a better understanding of the textual evidence and what the texts reveal about the culture.

2.5 Literacy in Ancient Egypt

Most people in ancient Egypt did not know how to read and write. Since the majority of Egyptians were peasant farmers, they would not have needed to learn to read, and the complexities of the written language would have made it more difficult to learn than most alphabetic writing systems. Although some members of the royal family and high status individuals, as well as officials, priests, and army officers were literate, scribes were needed for operations of the state at all levels. Egyptian scribes were professionals trained in special schools in royal administrative departments and temples. Some scribes probably learned through apprenticeship, such as is known from the New Kingdom workmen’s village of Deir el-Medina. Model letters recorded by school boys, on limestone ostraca and plaster-covered wooden boards, have been found which give us information about what was taught in these schools or to apprentices in jobs. A well-known Middle Egyptian text attributed to the scribe Khety extols the virtues of being a scribe, who will always have employment. He boasts that scribes do not have to wear rough garments like common laborers, and they can take baths. Scribes give orders and others have to obey them. Scribes were needed for the bureaucratic functions of all branches of the government and administration, including issuing the rations for government personnel and workers who depended on state resources for their livelihood. Tax collection and operations of the treasury needed to be recorded, as did organizing and supplying the personnel for expeditions outside of Egypt – for mining and quarrying, trade, and warfare. Scribes were also used for large-scale state work projects such as pyramid building. Probably the most visible evidence of writing in ancient Egypt are the hieroglyphic texts found on the walls of temples and tombs, both royal and private. These were the work of artisans who worked with scribes and/or literate artisans. Religious and mortuary texts were written and read by scribally trained priests, and scribes were needed for the construction and operation of temples. Legal proceedings, both local and national, were recorded by scribes. Wealthy private individuals needed scribes to administer their estates and to record documents such as wills and business transactions.

2.6 Textual Studies

The decipherment of Egyptian opened the way to recovering an understanding of the Egyptian language in all of its stages and scripts. An enormous undertaking (which continues in the present) was to record texts of all types for study. After the early 19th-century expeditions, Egyptologists such as Auguste Mariette, Heinrich Brugsch, Émile Chassinat, and Johannes Dümichen continued to record and publish Egyptian ITTC02 1/25/07 2:54 PM Page 33

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inscriptions from major temples, such as Edfu and Dendera. Chassinat published the Edfu temple inscriptions in eight volumes, while publication of the Dendera temple inscriptions continues in the present, by Sylvie Cauville. A monumental project to record Egyptian tombs for the Egypt Exploration Fund (EEF) was undertaken at several sites in Middle Egypt by Norman de Garis Davies (1865–1941) and Percy Newberry (1869–1949). Their work is especially valuable today because many of these tombs are in such a poor state of preservation. James Henry Breasted’s compilation of ancient Egyptian historical records later led to the Oriental Institute’s Epigraphic Survey, which continues in the present (see 1.4). At the same time progress on understanding the structure and grammar of ancient Egyptian was also being made, mainly in European universities. Adolf Erman (1854– 1937) was the ﬁrst Egyptologist to divide the language into Old, Middle, and Late Egyptian. His translations, as well as those of Heinrich Brugsch (1827–94), are recognized as the ﬁrst generally reliable ones. Important contributions in hieratic and demotic were

Box 2-B Decipherment of Egyptian

Renaissance scholars who tried to decipher Egyptian By 1802 translations of the Greek text on the hieroglyphs were misled by ancient Greek historians, Rosetta Stone had appeared, and the first studies of who believed that the signs were symbolic and not the demotic text were done by a French scholar, Baron phonetic. But some progress was made in the late 18th Sylvestre de Sacy (1758–1838). His student, the century by Georg Zoëga, a scholar of Coptic manu- Swedish diplomat Johan Åkerblad (1763–1819), cor- scripts who compiled a corpus of hieroglyphic signs. rectly identified proper names in the demotic text, and Decipherment was greatly aided by the 1799 discovery made a list of 29 demotic alphabetic signs, about half of the Rosetta Stone in Rashid (ancient Rosetta) in the of which were correct. But Åkerblad thought that all Nile Delta by French soldiers digging fortifications. In demotic signs were alphabetic, and he got no further Cairo French savants of the Napoleonic expedition soon in decipherment. recognized that the stone was bilingual, in Egyptian A major breakthrough was made in 1814 by the and Greek. The French circulated copies of the Rosetta English scholar and linguist Thomas Young (1773– Stone before it was surrendered to the British after 1829). Young was also a practicing physician and Napoleon’s defeat in Egypt (it is now in the British did research on physiological optics, discovering the Museum in London). undulatory theory of light in 1802. Working first The Rosetta Stone is a stela dating to 196 bc, in the with a copy of the Rosetta Stone, Young later studied reign of Ptolemy V Epiphanes. It was written in three monumental inscriptions recorded in the Descrip- scripts: Egyptian hieroglyphs at the top (the least well tion de l’Égypte (see Box 1-A). Young recognized that preserved part), demotic in the middle, and a Greek Egyptian writing was a mix of different types of translation at the bottom. The inscription records a signs, and that the demotic script was related to the decree of the General Council of Egyptian priests in hieroglyphs. Although on the brink of deciphering the city of Memphis. Titles and epithets of the king are Egyptian with his 1819 publication of a list of alpha- given, as are royal benefactions following the king’s betic signs, Young did not fully succeed because of his coronation, such as gifts to temples and remission of belief that the signs were mainly symbolic, with only taxes and debts. The priests reciprocated by honoring limited phonetic components. the king in temples.